by Jerome A. Jackson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2004
Vital, thorough, and light of touch: rays of hope play against an admonitory tale of habitat and perhaps even species...
Well-synthesized portrait of the rare, possibly extinct bird from one of its greatest admirers.
In 1973, on the Noxubee River just inside the Alabama border, ornithologist Jackson thought he saw an ivory-billed woodpecker. By then, he had followed the ivory-billed trail for close to a decade, and he would go on for another 30 years to explore the bird’s former haunts in the river bottoms and adjacent uplands of Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, Florida’s Fakahatchee Stand, the Big Thicket of Texas, Mississippi’s Yazoo, and on over to Cuba, where in 1988 Jackson had two possible sightings and a number of clear audibles. Here, with an enthusiasm that keeps clear of obsession, the author gathers a goodly amount of the available documentation on the ivory-billed: its undulating, jerky flight; its call, once described as “the burry reed notes of the bagpipe”; its diet, clutch size, and anatomy; its range and predilection for specific habitats. To these nuts and bolts of good natural history, Jackson adds a human touch with a swath of anecdotal material. He provides small-scope biographies of well-known bird folk—among them, Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson, John James Audubon—and their relationships with the ivory-billed; students of the bird, Arthur Allen and James Tanner in particular, get more extensive backgrounders. Jackson examines the ivory-billed’s iconic status, from trade and use by native populations to its employment on stamps and whiskey decanters. The author argues persuasively that we should not assume the bird is extinct in the US, citing its rarity, wariness, potential quietude (though it can also be a yapper), long lifespan, and the remoteness of its preferred nesting sites as possible reasons for the lack of documented sightings over the past 60 years.
Vital, thorough, and light of touch: rays of hope play against an admonitory tale of habitat and perhaps even species destruction. (30 halftones)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58834-132-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
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by Lulu Miller illustrated by Kate Samworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Patrik Svensson translated by Agnes Broomé ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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